Can the Body Heal Itself? A Pharmacist and Naturopath Talk Pregnancy and Nutrition | MaternalRx

Can the Body Heal Itself? A Pharmacist and Naturopath Talk Pregnancy and NutritionDr. Randi Shannon said she was going to blow our minds, and she delivered! In this episode of MaternalRx, pharmacist Danielle Plummer, PharmD, sits down with Dr. Shannon, a traditional naturopath who uses Face, Tongue and Nail Analysis, an approach she describes as rooted in thousands of years of traditional medicine. Their conversation explores pregnancy preparation, nutrition, nausea and vomiting, minerals, essential oils, disease prevention, and Dr. Shannon’s belief that the face, tongue, and fingernails can reveal clues about what is happening inside the body. The interview is followed by a commentary where Danielle puts her pharmacist hat on for an evidence-based debrief, examining several of the episode’s most surprising claims and asking an essential healthcare question: What happens when an idea sounds biologically plausible, yet the clinical evidence has not been tested? Topics include Type 1 diabetes, Down syndrome, salt intake, peppermint oil in pregnancy, cholesterol, dietary oils, pharmaceuticals, nutrient requirements, and the important distinction between traditional naturopaths and licensed naturopathic doctors. This isn’t a conversation about dismissing complementary medicine. It’s about listening with curiosity while still asking important questions: What do we know? What don’t we know? Where might an approach put a patient or pregnancy at risk, and where might it support the body’s ability to heal? Stay through the end to hear Danielle's Takeaway! Section 1: Welcome and disclaimer Meet Dr. Randi Shannon What is a naturopath? Preparing the body for pregnancy Nausea in pregnancy and gut health What can fingernails tell us? Nutrients and claims about preventing or reversing disease What can the tongue reveal? What can the face reveal? Section 2: Evidence-Based Debrief Do we need exactly 60 minerals, 16 vitamins, 12 amino acids and 3 essential fatty acids? Is Type 1 diabetes created during the first trimester? Can Type 1 diabetes develop later in life? Can maternal nutrition reverse Down syndrome in utero? Peanuts, mold, aflatoxins and liver risk Peppermint essential oil during pregnancy Are Americans “undersalted”? Pharmaceuticals, synthetic drugs and side effects Cholesterol, dietary oils and reproductive health Traditional vs. licensed naturopaths Danielle’s takeaway About Dr. Randi ShannonRandi Shannon, ND, is a Florida-based traditional naturopath known for her use of Face, Tongue and Nail Analysis. She works with clients virtually in Florida, across the United States and internationally. Learn more:TheBodyCan.comRandiShannon.com/face-tongue-nail-analysis/(844) 275-1056About the HostDanielle Plummer, PharmD, is a pharmacist, antepartum doula, and founder of Obstet-Rx. Also known as HG Pharmacist, she helps women navigate Hyperemesis Gravidarum and medication use in complex pregnancies through education, advocacy and personalized medicine. HGPharmacist.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniellerplummerHG Support Group: facebook.com/HGClinicalSolutionsImportant Listener NoteThis episode contains health and medical claims made by a guest that may differ from or contradict current evidence-based medical guidance. The guest’s statements represent her perspectives and should not be interpreted as endorsement by MaternalRx, Danielle Plummer, or the Pharmacy Podcast Network. The second half of the episode provides Danielle’s evidence-based commentary on several of these claims. This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized medical care. Patients should discuss medications, supplements, herbal products, essential oils, and other treatments with an appropriately qualified healthcare professional. TzrIckmic7Yeigg0uagt

• 0:05Speaker 00

  You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the pharmacy podcast network.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Welcome to the maternal RX podcast on the pharmacy podcast network. Today, we're shining light on naturopathic care and exploring how pharmacists can partner with naturopaths to make lasting impact for those affected. Today's episode explores one naturopathic practitioner's perspective on nutrition and natural medicine. Some opinions discussed differ from current medical guidelines and may not reflect or may even contradict the consensus of evidence-based medicine. For the purpose of this interview, to learn about naturopathy, I condensed the interview to focus on Dr. Shannon's work. Stay tuned for a following segment where I take a deeper dive into many of her statements where I could not find clinical evidence.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  If you're a naturopath or have worked with one, please let me know what you think of this episode. And if you have ideas on how pharmacists and naturopaths can collaborate to improve maternal health care. Thank you so much for listening and keeping the dialogue open. I am so excited to introduce today's guest, Dr. Randy Shannon, naturopathic doctor, expert in face, tongue, and fingernail analysis, specializing in reversing more than 1,000 so-called incurables using 5,000-year-old original medicine to help restore health. Cancer, heart disease, and chronic conditions are her focus. Literally, there's nothing she won't work with.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Author of Tongue Tales, an Amazon bestselling children's book, a regular guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie, and featured on Inside Success TV as one of their legacy makers, Dr. Randy Shannon, thebodycan.com. We will dive into what you do and where to find you. I am absolutely overjoyed because I know very little about naturopathy. Please add to anything I missed and go ahead and introduce yourself.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  That's so great because we in the naturopathic world actually know that people that go the traditional route actually don't get that education and it's not your fault. And in the beginning, I used to be angry about that, like, why don't people study? But you're doing this podcast and I just want to thank you so much for such an amazingly warm welcome. And it really is an honor to be on your show. Like naturopaths and pharmacists, they don't get together very much. So this is really, really cool. And I think the audience is going to love it. I think it's great for the whole platform of pharmacists. So hopefully they all bring me in. So, you know, what you do is so incredibly important.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  You know, and I'll get into a story about one of my daughter-in-laws and she had a midwife. So, you know, just slightly different. And I don't know all the differences even in your field, but that was what saved her. Going through her pregnancy was having somebody there as her advocate. It was huge. It was huge. So you're doing amazing things.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. No woman becomes pregnant and says, let me take medications. No, we're terrified. History has us terrified for good reason. Even medications that are safe for the baby, we know they're not teratogens. There's risks for the mom and we always have to weigh those risks versus benefits. It's where, you know, here I do some pharmacogenetic testing to help guide medication therapy. But my number one question is, what can I do to avoid medications? What can I do as a more natural journey while I'm preparing for pregnancy through the pregnancy or postpartum to recover from my experience? What is a naturopath?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  So a naturopath, we believe in prevention. Okay. And we believe that most every single thing is reversible. And we stress that, we emphasize that. And then I took that even one step further because my field is I do 5,000-year-old original medicine. I go right back to what did they do back then? And there was multiple parts of the world that were doing the same thing. They all had it figured out. If you look at the face, the fingernails, the tongue, and other marks of concern on the body, then that will tell you a story. And we think, well, she's crazy. How could that be?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  But if we, we learned in like first grade that if you take a tree, right? And you cut it, you see the rings around the tree and it tells the story. Was it exposed to fire or petulance or flooding? It'll show in the rings. Our body is no different in those areas that I just mentioned. And so my clients are in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and 21 other countries because they don't have to come to me. Nobody comes to me ever. They send me pictures. And when they send me the pictures, I create a full report for them and I tell them everything that I saw. And then we also address it to help them get it reversed.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  So we, we cover quite a bit of territory as naturopaths. So I'm looking at every organ, every system. I'll take on the athletes. I take on lots of doctors. You know, you mentioned on the top about heart disease and cancers and all of those things that are scary. To me, they're not scary. Some things will take a little bit longer to help the person get on track and then their body reverses it. I don't ever claim a cure myself. The body is what does it. I see these things as more simple fixes. Moms, everything's getting pulled out of them. We pour back into them. And, you know, I'm going to say some things on here that will blow the listeners' minds.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  We've had so many amazing cases of women that have come to us. We talked off air about how absolutely important that first trimester is. And most people, when they find out they're pregnant, they weren't already doing any kind of a vitamin regimen. Young people assume they have everything. They assume that they're the healthiest that there is. Oh, only mom and dad get that or some rare aunt who got something, you know, somewhere else. But at the end of the day, when somebody is going to be pregnant, they really should have been on nutrients for six to 12 months at minimum in advance so that you can go into that pregnancy healthy.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  But we know pregnancy doesn't work like that all the time. It's a surprise. And so immediately, once somebody knows that they're pregnant, they need to be on a very well-rounded program. And I know that you'll probably offer this to your clients in the future. Basically, every single person, even if they are just a couch potato, they require not pregnant, nothing, not an athlete, nothing, kick all of those things off the table. Just a person sitting on the couch, not even expending any energy. They're just awake. They need 60 minerals, 16 vitamins, 12 amino acids, and three essential fatty acids.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Now, if they go to the gym or they're pregnant, they might want to increase some of those things. If they're very athletic, they're pulling reserves from the body and the brain is so smart. It will rob other areas. And if you don't, you know, think about somebody going into shock. All of a sudden, the legs don't work, the arms don't work. They start talking gibberish. And then if it's bad enough, they'll go unconscious. The brain is saying in that moment, I need all reserves and I'm going to shove them here, probably towards the heart. Okay. Because we can live without limbs. We all have seen those people that don't have them and they're, they're not dying. They're fine.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  But we can't live without the heart. So the brain is very smart. And when a young mom or a new mother takes those nutrients, it's like, wow, for the baby.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Where do we begin if we wanted to start working with a naturopath?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Well, I'm a little biased about me because I actually, after my schooling, and I'm a traditional naturopath, so I don't carry the license. I did that intentionally. And the reason I did that intentionally is I hosted what I call a law call for about five years, and I really learned the differences between licenses and certifications. And if you say the wrong thing, they take the license, throw you in jail, et cetera. So I went the traditional route, and you know, the lockdowns and things that we all just, you know, went through a few years ago was a, they went after people that didn't say what they wanted them to say, and they all had to fight for their licenses. I was fine. I was fine. Now, I did lose, I was a Fox affiliate talk show host. They didn't like what I was saying. So after

• 9:34Speaker 02

  eight years, they took that show away. So I did experience censorship, but not like people that were coming at me for a license. So, but they can get ahold of me, thebodycan.com, and it's called The Body Can, because the body can heal itself. randyshannon.com, which is the new one, we literally just launched it this week, Randy spelled with an I, randyshannon.com. It's a beautiful site. And my toll-free number is 844-275-1056. They can get a consultation, they can get a tongue analysis only, or a full, where I'm looking at everything. And that's really thorough, and they all come with multiple months of appointments. So, pretty fantastic.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  So if somebody had a difficult pregnancy, wants more children, what would they want to do then to prepare for their next pregnancy?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Okay, so we actually have full programs. Those 60 minerals, et cetera, that I talked about, they would need to get on that program. And then we target women in particular. So we have certain things for men, and then we have certain things that are specific just to women, because obviously our bodies are different. And then we also make sure that their diet is completely right. There is-

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Is that possible? Does anyone have a completely right diet?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Nobody's 100% perfect, but through pregnancy, a lot of people will really lock it up, and, and do the right things. No wheat, barley, rye, oatmeal, or buckwheat. No fried foods, no processed meats. I'm crazy about supplements and where you're sourcing. So, there's one company I use, and it's because any kind of oil should never be exposed to oxygen. Because when it is, it oxidizes, and it's any oil, people will go, but you're telling me to throw out my extra, extra virgin olive oil? Yes, I am. Throw them all out, because they're all oxidized, they're all rotten and rancid, and even if you get one good benefit, you're

• 11:42Speaker 02

  going to have four or five bad ones. The essential fatty acid that I take, and I have all of my clients take, when they catch that fish, they immediately flash freeze it. They take it down into nitrogen-filled brooms. There is no oxygen to be had. Nobody does this, except this one company that I know of. And then they extract it, they immediately encase it, and they even spray the insides of the bottles out with nitrogen. These guys are wearing full oxygen masks. So, they are spraying it out and encasing it, so it's pure. And the opposite would be this. We always hear about people in like nursing homes

• 12:25Speaker 02

  or elderly, they start to get the little brown spots, kind of all over, and that gets blamed on aging.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. We call them age spots, absolutely.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Correct. And that's not true. They're probably eating rotten and rancid oils.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  If you don't think that oxidation happens, think about an apple, you take a bite out of the apple, you set it on the counter, what does it look like in three hours? Just-

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Brown. Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Right. Imagine that oil on your counter three weeks. Oh, but I put it in the fridge, it's in a dark bottle. No, it doesn't matter, because you took that lid off, oxygen rushed in. And when they processed it, to begin with, they did not immediately enclose that. And you would have to have more olives than the planet Earth can, can even provide to have that bottle be full of pure, not some other oil-infused oil. And so they put really, I mean, there's other ones that rot, and they're just terrible for aging, and not good for us. So, mothers in that first trimester, that's where things happen.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  I work, as you heard, I work with patients who have had extreme nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, and their gut really gets destroyed through the pregnancy. Recovering from that takes a whole lot amount of time. What recommendations would you make for these patients?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I have daughter-in-laws, and they're all having babies, and some have already had them, some are on the way. When they get the nausea, there's a couple of things that are the go-tos. Eliminating all the bad things out of the diet, and the go-tos would be ginger, of course, which you know about that one, but also the B complex is very effective for nausea. And then just when they eat, when the stomach is acidic and they're feeling that, the stomach is the one place in the whole body where it's supposed to be super acidic. And so, medical drugstores, et cetera, they tell everybody,

• 14:35Speaker 02

  go get Tums, or things like that. I am totally against that, because we want it to stay acidic, and we want to do exactly the opposite of what your brain tells you is logic, which is throw more acid on the fire. How do you do that? Enzymes and salt. Salt's the easiest. Go in the kitchen, grab it, put it, put it in the hand, lick, whatever. I don't care what you gotta do, but you gotta get salt in. The body is off, the, the acid alkaline is off. And so when we get nausea, and the stomach is feeling that, that stomach is

• 15:13Speaker 02

  supposed to be a 1.2 to a 1.3 pH. So it's moving more into the 1.5 probably range, and so we need to bring it back to that 1.2, 1.3, and salt will do that. And I use Redmond, which is out of Utah.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  When I was a pharmacist, as a retail pharmacist, the data came out that showed proton pump inhibitors have very terrible long-term effects, looking at decreased bone strength, looking, right, leading to osteoporosis, looking at increased rates of Alzheimer's, and it's quite scary. So, the FDA approvals on those meds were for two weeks. They were not meant to be long terms, and instead of finding the root cause, right, these patients are put on them, and then stay on them. And in the world of medicine, at least in the United States, some of the biggest medication problems happen at transitions of care. So if somebody goes into a hospital, and then is discharged from a hospital, they might

• 16:17Speaker 01

  be put on medications, and then they stay on those medications. And our antacids are very commonly stayed on, continued in those situations. So here, you're saying, let's stop this. That's one thing I always counsel on. If you have hyperemesis gravidarum, or that baby in the third trimester is pushing everything back up, because the stomach's pushed up, and the acid isn't processing through like it should, and you're feeling it, I would always say, use it just for the short amount of time, and as soon as you don't need it, or that baby's born, get off it, and then we're gonna work to get that balance back in your gut.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Another thing that'll actually work pretty quickly is peppermint.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And would that be safe to do during pregnancy?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, peppermint is a plant. They can, you know, chew on the leaf. And I would get like a rock salt to just chew on, and I bet it just goes away. It doesn't, and that's the whole thing. It like has a big, long word, you know, and it's, whole studies and things are done on it. But at the end of the day, you know, the doctor that I worked with, that retired, Dr. Joel Wallach, he was very famous, wrote like 18 books, and

• 17:32Speaker 02

  if the audience remembers Marlin Perkins, and Wild Kingdom, it was like the first animal planet in the 70s. So the doctor of veterinary medicine that was behind the scenes is the doctor I've worked with for over 20 years. And they did these cures, he was a doctor of veterinary medicine, they did all the cures in the animals, and then they brought those remedies to the people. And then he worked with me, almost exclusively, I can't say fully exclusively, but almost, especially in these last five years, 10 years, worked with me, and made sure that I learned every single one of those cures. So, that they did in animals. So I can't claim that, obviously, in people.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  But we definitely, I was at a dinner once, I'll try to make this quick, but there was an attorney across from me at a table of like eight or 10 people and he could not stop his belching. So I just picked up the salt and I handed it to him and I said, "Get some of that salt on your spoon and eat it." And he's like, "What?" You know, like looking at me like I was crazy. And I said, "No, do it." And he barely put some salt. And I said, "No, put some salt on there." Like, "Don't be afraid." It was within seconds. He never burped again, the whole time. Never saw it. Salt takes you back to that 1.2 to the 1.3, whereas the tums, the antacid, the sodium bicarbonate, which is the same thing

• 18:56Speaker 02

  as baking soda, also the same thing they throw in swimming pools to keep it clean, it's the same thing I throw in my laundry. I don't want that in my stomach. And so that takes you alkaline. And the stomach is the one place in the whole body that must stay acidic. But peppermint oil would do it as well. It needs to be inedible because sometimes some of these different essential oils are probably not. And you want to make sure it's clean and organic. So, but it just takes a drop or two and it takes like 18 seconds.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Can I circle back to, you talked about nails? What is it that you look at the nails? And I actually find this fascinating on a personal level because I have those ridges through my nails. I have family members that opened my eyes to this many years ago and said, "Oh, these doctors say it's related to different autoimmune diseases or other diseases." And knock on wood, I'm a healthy person and I've yet to be able to relate it to anything. But this is something that you do. You look at nails?

• 20:00Speaker 02

  I love it. I look at the striations. I never really teach it, what everything is on here, because you do have to triangulate it and go to the face and go to the tongue when you're looking at nails. Because one sign here really does need to be confirmed here or on the face. Okay, so, but I look for, oh, everything, white spots, white streaks, ridges, which way are they going, horizontal, vertical, cracks in certain places can mean heart disease. Like, it's crazy how many amazing things that you can see there. You

• 20:39Speaker 02

  definitely can see signs of cancer. And I really test it with my cancer clients. So you can bet, when I see a cancer client, I'm testing this every single time, every single client. And if they didn't know that they had a cancer, it is not my job to diagnose, okay? I could go straight to jail for that. So I don't, but I'll say, "You should have this, and this is something that we need to look at." So if we don't get this to start growing back within the next few months, then maybe you should get some blood work done. So I dance around it a little bit, because I also don't want to put the fear

• 21:23Speaker 02

  in them. And we want to make sure. And so my programs are so aggressive that even if they did have a cancer in that moment, what we're doing is going to help them anyway.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Diagnoses aside, right, you said, "We're not diagnosing, this is not our wheelhouse. It's replenishing minerals, nutrients." Are there certain nutrients, and based on what you see in the nails and the tongue and around the face, that you could then replenish and potentially then reverse or prevent a disease?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's, that's my goal every single day, is to make sure, see, I, you know, when I first got started as a naturopathic doctor, I did a search of how many so-called incurable diseases that they said that there were. And at the time, it was something like 400 or 500. I looked at it again about two years ago. I haven't, I haven't run it again. But I said, "How many incurable diseases are there?" Now it bumped up to over 1,000, which is nutty. That's not true. So, all of those are probably reversible, that they just added on. Because they've maybe come up with another

• 22:38Speaker 02

  prescription. And, and I know this is the pharmacist network, the pharmacist podcast, but I will say that every single pharmaceutical drug has a side effect. And because they are synthetic, they're not natural to the body. You know, when it comes to the fingernails, when it comes to the face, the whole industry of going and getting, let's say, injections and fillers, I'm like, pretty much against all of that. I'm 58. I've never colored my hair my whole life until last year, we taped a television show. And they were like,

• 23:21Speaker 02

  "We'd kind of like you to lighten it up a little bit." And I went to the guy, they said, and he created a video, literally, of digging into the back of my hair. And he said, "You have no gray hair." I said, "No, I don't, because I get all my nutrients." Like, if you see a silver-haired, white-haired, gray-haired, 40-year-old, 30-year-old, I've had eight-year-olds come to me with that. It is not an aging issue if I got an eight-year-old, right? So, it is an organ in the body. And the brain, just like in The Shock Factor, will go rob those things that create the hair, hair color. You know, guys lose hair,

• 24:03Speaker 02

  they don't have to lose the hair, they just have to get the nutrients. And then the brain will be like, "Okay, I got what I need. You can have hair. You can have color."

• 24:12Speaker 01

  So, this is audio only and nobody listening can see what you look like, but nobody would guess you're 58, Dr. Shannon. I mean, beautiful, stunning, without fillers. And you're in Florida, is that correct? Is that?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  I love the sun with no sunscreen. So, I do my best to eat. You know, we have amazing dessert places here. We have amazing wines that they ship in from all over. So it's not that I don't have these things every once in a while. I, you know, I do. But I always take care of myself before, during, and after, when I'm doing those things. I'll come back and do some things that regulate the blood back out. So, there's, you know, there's tricks to it. There's tricks.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  So, I think the situation has to do with our soil and our diet, right, that we're not absorbing the nutrients. If you walk through a grocery store today, a typical American grocery store, everything is in a box or in a can. And if you go to the produce section, it's all been frozen and transported. You know, there is, ideally, we all want to shop at farmer's markets, but the timing and the prices prevent so many people from doing so. Location accessibility, right? When we go to make our food choices and we choose if we're going to be sedentary or exercise, you're bringing in something, like

• 25:35Speaker 01

  you said, going back 5,000 years. What elements do we need in our body so that we don't end up needing medications or feeling like we are just exhausted or have diseases that we're told there's no cures to? Where do we begin?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Most naturopaths even just cherry pick different nutrients. They don't realize the extreme of what is needed because they didn't have the beauty of working with the guy who cured it all in animals. That's why, you know, he not only did that, but he bought the dirt, and then he created, he formulated the products. And I sell those to my clients. And I do that because then, every 30 days, we relook at the face, the fingernails, the tongue, and I show them real time how they're changing. And I show, like, face shapes change. We are literally going to be taping, I was just on with the studio, we're going to be

• 26:36Speaker 02

  taping a six-episode mini-series called Beyond Skin Deep about reversing the clock and turning around all these ailments naturally. The show is exciting because we're going to go through every single thing that I do with my clients now. And the studio loves us so much, that's why we're doing a show. So, because the world needs to hear this.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  If we can prevent disease, that's what we want to do. So, we talked about nails. What are you looking for on the tongue?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  The tongue is amazing. The tongue is more real time. Nails take a little bit longer for things to show up there. But the tongue is very fast. You do something today, I'm going to know it tomorrow. It's very fast. Simple things like what's going on with the stomach, digestive issues, gut bacteria issues, liver, gallbladder, kidney, pancreas, respiratory shows, hormones will show. I love when I hear that somebody had to go take this big test and it cost you $700 to $1,000. And I say, "Just stick out your tongue, let me see."

• 27:41Speaker 01

  So you just look at it? It's not like a swab or?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  I don't need to, because the original medicine, we could see it. My friends, I used to, you know, go out a lot, I live in Miami. And whenever I would show up, my friends would always be there and they'd say, "Hey, have you met Dr. Randy Shannon yet? Stick out your tongue." She looks at tongues. And it was always like, kind of a running joke. But I probably am not remarried because I saw their tongues and there's no...

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, you see lots of organs there, heart, liver shows a couple of different times in the tongue. And I can see the levels of, like, how bad is the heart? How bad are the hormones? And, you know, I can kind of put timelines. It takes about 90 to 120 days for us to kind of refill those storage bins of the people's organs that are super depleted. Takes about that on average. And about six months to really kind of turn that ship around. And sometimes things, you know, like, the trigeminal nerve, they're getting all kinds of pain, especially pregnant women. You know, they get that. Like, that can be

• 28:53Speaker 02

  turned around so fast. And we just need to know it. And then we go to the appropriate nutrients that will feed those areas really, really nicely. And we've had people that had bone-on-bone, and within six months, got another x-ray and they could see the cartilage regrowing.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  My father's had like four hip replacements. So that would have been a dream, right? And he was young, he was in his 30s when he got the first one. And we always learn osteoporosis is like for old people, right? And there he was in his 30s, getting his first hip replacement. So there must have been a mineral or something he was missing, huh?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  It's literally deficient. We have seen it on X-ray. So we know. And like if he's was deficient there, knees, hips, whatever. Do you, I mean, you probably know it, but the audience doesn't know it. But the heart is sitting on a pile of cartilage. So if you're missing it in the knees, guaranteed you're missing it there as well. So if you take a hit to that area, car accident, whatever, you could be in real trouble. So if you're suffering in the knees and the hips, you really need to reach out.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Well, then I'll go to the third one. On the face, what are you looking for on the face?

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Okay, faces I love. You know, when they say make an angry face and then they know right word of put that botox in.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  This is organs. It's not aging. I mean, and so we're looking at the lymphatic system. We can see reproductive is another verification on the face. Both the intestines, the kidney, bladder, um, liver for sure. Uh, adrenals we can see there. So quite a bit on the face and heart. If I didn't say that one specifically, the spleen. I mean, there is all kinds of stuff on the face. Absolutely. One of my favorites, I teach all of this in a master class. So people can do the whole class or we're actually getting ready to launch probably within two weeks of it. Uh, we're going to break it up into, listen, maybe you just want to learn the tongue or you just want to learn the nails.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  So we're going to make it so that people can do it in increments. But that is at the website as well. It's already up and running, um, master class page on the website.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  We've gained so much incredible information today. My brain is spinning. You have taken what is normal thought patterns for me, turned them upside down completely. Your training was very unique. It seems very different from other naturopathic doctors. I know my friends that live in Canada, it's covered by their insurance to see a naturopath. To learn more or to work with you, thebodycan.com. So that's T H E B O D Y C A N dot com. You can contact Dr. Shannon at doctor spelled out D O C T O R, Randy with an I, Shannon at gmail dot com

• 31:58Speaker 01

  or reach her at 844-275-1056. And if you found this helpful and interesting, please share it with your community. Dr. Shannon, thank you so much. Any last thoughts that you'd like to share?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Just, you know, this audience has people that are there that are sitting and suffering and they're saying, you know, I wonder if I should call her. The answer is yes, because I don't cherry pick nutrients. I really try to talk you into doing the whole package so that you're not tying a hand behind my back. And I can actually see and try triangulate the different locations and, you know, pick up the phone. At the very least, it's a fantastic baseline. It's a great program. We do it literally all over the world and you can stay in your home and nothing scares me. It's in my opinion, most everything is reversible.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Turning my thought patterns upside down, we learned in pharmacy school, like you said, what's a curable disease? What's reversible and what is not? And as you mentioned earlier, the numbers of what's not curable or reversible keeps growing and growing. And you're saying that is not true. Let's follow your footsteps. If any pharmacist did want to learn or become a naturopath, how would you have begin to do so?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  There is different schools all over the country. They're already licensed, so they might want to stay within that. Uh, there's schools specific to that. And then there's schools specific to the program that I did. So, um, they would just reach out. We kind of have a discussion. I would love to work with them and be even on more of their podcasts. It'd be fun.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Dr. Shannon, thank you so much. So many great insights and pearls and change of thought patterns. Looking forward to changing people's lives. Thank you again.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you so much.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  You know, I'm going to say some things on here that will blow the listeners mind.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Dr. Shannon lived up to her promise. Stay tuned for a deep dive into many of these statements and my perspective on them.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Every single person, even if they are just a couch potato, they require not pregnant, nothing, not an athlete, nothing. Take all of those things off the table, just a person sitting on the couch, not even expending any energy. They're just awake. They need 60 minerals, 16 vitamins, 12 amino acids and three essential fatty acids.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  The body does require many essential nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids. However, these exact numbers are not recognized nutritional standards, at least not that I could find anywhere. The scientifically supported concept is that adequate nutrient intake is important. While specific nutrient requirements vary by life stage, health status, genetics and individual circumstances. Dr. Shannon then goes on to talk about the increased nutrient needs of, of athletes, which of course that one makes sense. And I think we could find evidence behind it, but take a listen to what she says about the average lifespan.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Is that they're very athletic. If you look at the stats, it's something like, and I haven't rerun it lately, but a few years ago I would run the numbers. I'm a real number cruncher type of person. And, um, the stats were that athletes die on, on average in their 40s. Because they're pulling reserves from the body and

• 35:25Speaker 01

  So do athletes die on average in their 40s because they're depleted of nutrients? High levels of physical stress require appropriate recovery, nutrition and balance. However, population studies generally show that physically active individuals, including many athletes, have equal or greater longevity compared with less active populations. Certain sports or extreme training environments, however, may carry unique risks. Think about in 1995, when we lost two-time Olympian Sergey Grinkov to a massive heart attack at only 28 years old. And more recently, when we lost a gold medalist, Tori Bowie to a climactic seizures.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  A recent study reported that the average age of death of former football players, NFL players is 59.6 years old. That's about two decades less than the average American male. On average, football players died seven years earlier than major league baseball players due to cardiovascular disease. That's the one thing all these athletes from these different sports have in common. Do super athletes put more strain on their heart? Is inflammation a commonality? The broader claims that athletes generally die young is not supported. But could replenishing specific nutrients in super athletes have prevented these untimely deaths? Dr. Shannon seems to think so.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  In the first trimester, that is where a type one diabetic is created. The mother does not have enough essential fatty acids. So that other processes cannot take place.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  And therefore the type one, it's already baked in in trimester one. So if she's eating fish or she's eating sardines or she's taking a supplement and supplements are, I'm crazy about supplements and where you're sourcing. So there's one company I use and it's because, uh, any kind of oil should never be exposed to oxygen. Because when it is, it oxidizes and it's any oil. People will go, well, but you're, you're telling me to throw out my extra, extra virgin olive oil? Yes, I am throw them all out because they're all oxidized. They're all rotten and rancid. And even if you get one good benefit, you're going to have four or five bad ones.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Negativities or negatives. So, um, the, the essential fatty acid that I take and I have all of my clients take. When they catch that fish, they immediately flash freeze it. They take it down into nitrogen filled rooms. There is no oxygen to be had. Nobody does this except this one company that I know of. And then they extract it, they immediately encase it and they even spray the insides of the bottles out with nitrogen. These guys are wearing full oxygen masks. So they are spraying it out and encasing it. So it's pure. And the, the opposite would be this.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  We always hear about people in like nursing homes or elderly, they start to get the little brown spots kind of all over. And that gets blamed on aging.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. We call them age spots, absolutely.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Correct. And that's not true. They're probably eating rotten and rancid oils. And so if you don't think that oxidation happens, think about an apple. You take a bite out of the apple, you set it on the counter. What does it look like in three hours? Just

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Right. Imagine that oil on your counter three weeks. Oh, but I put it in the fridge. It's in a dark bottle. No, it doesn't matter because you took that lid off, oxygen rationed. And when they processed it, to begin with, they did not immediately enclose that.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  And you would have to have more olives than the planet Earth can even provide to have that bottle be full of pure, not some other oil infused oil. Type 1 diabetics, if the mom gets the EFAs, typically it's the omega-3 that's missing. But if she gets them and she's on them through that pregnancy, I think we could eradicate type 1 diabetics. Nobody has to be born that way. And they are also, like, if they are born that way, type 1s can't come along later when you're 50. That's a misdiagnosis.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  And I bet you've seen that, like, a 50-year-old man, all of a sudden they're giving him insulin. And the problem why they had to go to insulin is because he had such a bad diet that things were not happening in his body that would absorb nutrients. And so when he took, let's say, the metformin, it had no shot of absorption. And so then they say, oh, he's even worse than we thought. Let's put him on insulin for the rest of his life. But I even believe, because I've seen it with my own eyes, that a baby even at, say, 6 months, that they're being told this baby's gonna have Down's syndrome.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  If that mom gets nutrients, I fully believe that things can be reversed in utero. And it happened with, if you're familiar with Evel Knievel, remember Evel Knievel?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I do. I'm old enough to remember Evel Knievel, yes.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  So his, I believe it was his niece, don't quote me on that part, she was pregnant. And it might not be the niece, it could be, it was, you know, somewhere in there in his relation. She was pregnant and she was told that. And they sought out the doctor that I've worked with, he retired last year. He said, I don't know, let's see. So they gave her the nutrients, put her on a plan, and that child is a full-grown woman today, weren't like a perfect life. She became a ballerina, she did all kinds of things. I think she's an attorney now. So I'm telling you that I don't think it's over. You just, the moms just have to have what they need and miracles can happen.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Nutrients are powerful.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Nutrients are powerful, but can they make miracles happen? Could type 1 diabetes created during the first trimester happen because of a lack of essential fatty acids? Maternal nutrition is important for fetal development, and essential fatty acids play important roles in growth and cellular function. However, type 1 diabetes is understood to be a complex immune disease influenced by genetic susceptibility and environmental factors. Current evidence just does not support maternal fatty acid deficiency as the cause of type 1 diabetes. However, omega-3 fatty acids do have important roles in inflammation, regulation, and fetal

• 42:35Speaker 01

  development. Preventing or eliminating type 1 diabetes would be an extraordinary claim requiring strong clinical evidence. Current research just does not demonstrate that omega-3 supplementation can eradicate type 1 diabetes. Dr. Shannon, I'm rooting for you. Let's get that evidence that you've seen in, as case studies in real life with yourself and your mentor, your teacher, and let's prevent this, right? Let's talk about some of these other claims here. Opened olive oil and commercial oils are rancid and harmful. So oils can undergo oxidation, particularly with exposure to heat, light, and oxygen. Proper storage is important for maintaining quality.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  However, oxidation occurs on a spectrum. And the statement that most commercial oils are inherently rancid or harmful is an oversimplification. Are age spots caused by eating rancid oils rather than aging and sun exposure? Oxidative stress, again, like our athletes of the heart, oxidative stress is involved in aging biology. Age spots are primarily associated with cumulative ultraviolet exposure, genetics, and normal aging processes. Current dermatological evidence doesn't support rancid oil consumption as the primary cause. But I'm heading that direction, Dr. Shannon, so if there's any way that taking your special oils can prevent age spots,

• 44:04Speaker 01

  I might just give it a try. And the claim that Down's syndrome can be reversed in utero with nutrients, this one, we are betting on miracles here. Nutrition plays an important role in supporting healthy pregnancies, but Down's syndrome is caused by an additional copy of chromosome 21, right? Trisomy 21, it's known as. There is currently no evidence that nutritional therapy can reverse a chromosomal condition. In the story of a relative of Evel Knievel reversing a prenatal Down's syndrome diagnosis through nutrients, individual stories can be meaningful, but medical conclusions require documented evidence, including diagnostic confirmation and reproducible outcomes. Again, Dr.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Shannon, if you saw this happen, let's see if we can replicate it. If it could be as simple as supplementing with very specific omega-3s or other nutrients to each patient, let's start getting that as our standard of care and seeing the evidence. And talking about diabetes management, type 1 diabetes saying it cannot develop later in life and adult diagnoses are misdiagnoses. What do we know? Autoimmune diabetes can occur at any age, including adulthood. Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, called LADA, and I do have another podcast where I interviewed an expert about this, is recognized form of autoimmune diabetes.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  If adults placed on insulin simply failed to absorb metformin due to poor nutrition, well, what do we know? Diabetes progression is influenced by insulin protection, insulin resistance, genetics, autoimmune processes, and many other factors. Nutrition, of course, is vital, extremely important, but this explanation does not reflect the complexity of diabetes management as we know it now.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  You know, I think it was the LA Lakers, they had a cardiology doctor on staff. Now, he's a cardiologist, he's an expert for a major NBA team, and you know what he died of? He had a heart attack. Their doctor, Macon Bank, they ought to be hiring me because I will actually help them make their hearts and their valves and all of the whole entire system healthier.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I couldn't find any evidence through online searches of a cardiologist that worked for a professional basketball team, either the LA Lakers or another one, dying of a heart attack himself. However, I did come up with so many responses that showed the actual basketball players themselves passing away of coronary artery disease or other heart-related illnesses. Again, like we discussed just a little bit ago, younger than they should have been, far before the average age of death for an American male. And you have to wonder what's going on with the heart and could the therapies that Dr.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Shannon prescribes through supplementation decrease inflammation or other, I don't know, what's going on with these athletes' hearts? It is, another article talked about it being with that widowmaker and getting the right testing done because this should not be happening.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Nobody, pregnant or not, male, female, doesn't matter, nobody should be eating peanuts.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Really?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Right. They sit in moisture and create a mold. A mold grows in there and that is super toxic to us and it really goes after your liver. So nobody should ever have peanuts. And I love peanuts, but I don't eat them. You can't.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Are other nuts good, though?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  From the trees are great.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Okay? Just nothing really sitting on the ground, sitting in moisture.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  So should nobody eat peanuts because they contain mold that is toxic to the liver? I'd be curious if any of the listeners have heard this one before. I had not and did a bit of a deep dive. What I found was that certain molds can produce aflavotoxins, which are associated with liver toxicity. However, regulated food systems monitor these risks and avoiding peanuts entirely is not recommended for the general population. According to the nonprofit organization, National Peanut Butter, aflavotoxin is a naturally occurring byproduct of mold that affects many crops. Rigorous food safety measures mean the risk of a consumer being exposed to aflavotoxin

• 48:46Speaker 01

  in American peanut products is very low. According to the FDA, there has never been a human illness outbreak caused by aflavotoxins in the United States where foods are carefully regulated and inspected to prevent such an occurrence. That said, if you have any concern, I think avoiding peanuts would probably be an easy thing to do.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  I think it's very important to circle back to the idea of using peppermint to decrease nausea and/or vomiting in pregnancy. There's a big difference in types of peppermint, and the danger might be with peppermint essential oils because they're concentrated. Here's what Dr. Shannon had to say.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  If they take some peppermint oil and just put it in, you know, like a tiny glass, okay, half that water, you don't even need that much water, just one or two drops at most, I'd start with one, and drink that, like 18 seconds later, it's gone.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Peppermint has been shown to relieve nausea during pregnancy in some women. But peppermint in food or tea, keep in mind, the amounts differ than that from a concentrated essential oil. As a pharmacist, we wouldn't counsel on just saying a drop or two in some water. We don't know how much that is, and we measure things out for an exact amount that has proven evidence of safety, especially during pregnancy. Essential oil ingestion during pregnancy has limited safety data, and claims of rapid symptom relief require clinical evidence.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  The Japanese eat something like 12 to 15 grams of salt a day. In America, we eat something like one to three. We're very undersalted. They're very healthy, they've got great skin. They don't have even probably close to half of the disease we have.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  So how much salt is a healthy amount to have? As much as the Japanese or as low as the Americans? And what is the correlation going on here? Well, when we think about the sources of that salt, in Japan, traditional sources include soy sauce, soups like miso soup, salted fish or seafood, and pickled vegetables. In the United States, our salt's coming from commercial and processed foods like pizza, sandwiches, soups, and processed chicken. So is this a correlation or is it causation? And would increasing salt actually help our diets and our skin?

• 51:08Speaker 02

  And I know this is the pharmacist network, the pharmacist podcast, but I will say that every single pharmaceutical drug has a side effect. And because they are synthetic, they're not natural to the body. Women in particular, they take something, I think it's called Primarine. And what they don't really realize is that is horse urine.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Okay, shock value aside, it is not horse urine, and not all pharma products are synthetic. So let's talk about what is the truth going on here? Natural products, according to the FDA, are unaltered medicines taken straight from plants, animals, fungi, like penicillin is from mold. Semisynthetics are natural substances that are chemically modified in a lab to make them safer or stronger, such as opioid pain relievers made from poppy plants. Biologics are large, complex medical treatments grown or produced using living cells and microorganisms like bacteria, yeast, like insulin.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And fully synthetic drugs, which are small molecules built completely from scratch using chemical reactions in a traditional lab. So not all pharma products are synthetic. They could fall into any one of these categories. What is Primarine? Primarine contains a blend of conjugated equine estrogens, which are natural female estrogen hormones extracted from the urine of the pregnant mare, which is where the name comes from. So Primarine is actually a natural product. It's not built from scratch in a lab like a fully synthetic. There's no lab modifications to it, unlike semisynthetic drugs, and it's not a biologic.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  According to the FDA, Primarine is important to note that many health resources refer to it as a synthetic hormone. This is often context dependent. In clinical environments, it's called synthetic to distinguish it from human identical hormones because it introduces your equine, right, your horse etris estrogens that do not naturally occur inside the human body. From a manufacturing and chemical classification standpoint, however, it remains a purified natural product. Of everything that Dr. Shannon said, which seemed to be quite shocking to me, this next one about cholesterol takes the cake. Have a listen.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Cholesterol is one of the things that we need on top of those other things. And that just puts the whole medical world upside down. They've never understood that, but we want cholesterol as high as the sky. What makes cholesterol go bad are those fried foods and those foods cooked in oils. And so that's what gives people a bad number where all of a sudden the heart's in trouble. But, you know, the reproductive organs themselves, that is made up of 95% cholesterol. So if you get rid of cholesterol, you're shutting your systems down. 90% of our whole body is cholesterol. So if we shut it off and we take those drugs that the pharmacists give, which, you know,

• 54:23Speaker 02

  I've never agreed with them, that is like the one thing where I tell my clients, I can't tell you to get off of anything, but if there was one I'd personally throw in the trash, it was the cholesterol ones. So.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  I think every pharmacist right now is spinning in circles trying to process this, right? For sure. Let's talk about cholesterol. This was one of the areas where I noticed the greatest contrast between what was presented in the interview and what I was taught in pharmacy school and what is supported by current cardiovascular evidence. I want to be careful not to dismiss the underlying point that cholesterol is an essential substance in the body. It absolutely is. However, the recommendation to have cholesterol as high as the sky, along with the suggestion that statins should be discarded, is very different from the evidence-based approach we were taught regarding LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular risk.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Just as cholesterol is very important for many different body processes, it's also genuinely important for reproduction. It's not that the reproductive organs are made up of cholesterol, but rather in the ovaries and testes, specialized cells take cholesterol and convert it into steroid hormones to include estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol, and aldosterone. So they're literally the building blocks of steroid hormones. And while cholesterol is essential to the heart and blood vessels too, chronically elevated LDL cholesterol can contribute to plaque buildup and cardiovascular disease. The cholesterol our cells need is not the same thing as having high levels of cholesterol circulating in our blood.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  So yes, cholesterol is essential, but that doesn't mean that more is automatically better. My final thought that's important to clarify is that being a traditional naturopath is different from being a licensed naturopathic doctor. Someone can have completed a doctor level naturopathic program and still choose not to be licensed, depending on their education and where they practice. But I don't think the important question is simply, is this person licensed? I think we should look at what their training actually was, what credentials they hold, what they're legally permitted to do, and most importantly, whether the specific health claims they're making are supported by good evidence. What I took away from this conversation is that there is certainly a place for looking

• 56:44Speaker 01

  at nutrition, lifestyle, prevention, and the whole patient, not just the medications they take. As a pharmacist, I think these conversations are very important, particularly in pregnancy, when patients are understandably cautious about medications and want to know what else they can do to support their health. I've met more and more and more pharmacists that are either currently working in functional medicine, a variation, a range of integrative medicine, or wanting to start their own practices that combine different modalities within medicine. At the same time, this interview reminded me why evidence matters so much in healthcare. Some of the claims we discussed were very different from what we learn in pharmacy and

• 57:26Speaker 01

  medical training, and in some cases were directly contrary to established evidence and clinical guidelines. Before publishing this episode, I reached back out to Dr. Shannon for the evidence supporting some of the more significant claims. I want to give her an opportunity to provide the research behind her recommendations. For me, that's really the purpose of maternal RX, to have conversations across healthcare disciplines, remain curious, ask questions, and ultimately help patients make informed decisions based on the best evidence available. Not every idea needs to be dismissed simply because it's different from conventional medicine, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And as healthcare professionals, I think it's our responsibility to know the difference

• 58:08Speaker 01

  between an interesting hypothesis and individual's clinical experience, even when that does cross decades, and something that has actually been demonstrated in the scientific literature. I hope that these claims that she made that are currently contrary to how we practice and what we learn and know will someday become possible and that all diseases are reversible. A giant thank you to Dr. Randy Shannon for sharing her years of experience and knowledge. And if you want to learn more about what she does, she has a course upcoming that you're welcome to enroll, and she's always available to work with. Thank you, everyone, for listening. If you found this interesting, please share it. And if you have worked with a naturopath, let me know.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  I'd love to hear the experience. This podcast is for education only. Please consult your healthcare providers for medical advice. Everything I share on this podcast is strictly from my own experience and education and not a reflection of any company where I work.